Three Captains Walk into a Bar
by nicnac918
Summary: You'd think one of them would have seen it coming. (Or, wherein Jack and Jim are amused and confused by turns, and John is way too old for this shit.) Tenth in Many Intersecting Plans
Jack walked in the front doors of the bar, or pub, Jack supposed, since he was back in London again. Back on Earth, in fact: he'd been spending the last couple of years on Delta IV – now there was a group of people who knew how to party. Of course, Jack was regretting his choice to ditch Mycroft's trackers before going there now, since it had apparently been almost six months since Mycroft had first started trying to hunt him down and give him a message. Of course, in lives like theirs six months was barely any time of all, but on the other hand, six months was still six months.

Jack's gaze swept over the patrons, and he felt grin overtake his face as he spotted the person he was looking for sitting at the far end of the bar. He sauntered across the room and placed a hand on the Johnny's shoulder and the one on the shoulder of Johnny's – very attractive, but Jack would come back to that later – friend. "I'm not interrupting anything, am I?"

"Jack!" Johnny said, standing up to give Jack a hug, and Jack clung back tightly. Two hundred and fifty years, almost, it had been with no idea where or how his son was, besides the cold comfort that Mycroft would find him and let him know once Johnny was safe again, or if the worst had happened.

Johnny was ready to let go before Jack was, hardly surprising given from Johnny's perspective it had probably only seemed as long as any of their fights had been, but was willing to hang on for as long as Jack wanted to. Finally Jack was ready to pull away, but only to arm's length, placing his hands on Johnny's shoulders and just looking at him. "I love you, Johnny," Jack said, having promised himself somewhere around the hundred year mark that that would be the first thing he said to his son when he finally saw him again. Of course, technically it had been the second thing he'd said, but you couldn't deny a man his entrance.

Maybe Johnny had felt the impact of the timing passing, at least in some way, because he replied without any noticeable hesitation, "I love you too."

Jack gave Johnny one last clap on the shoulder before letting go completely. That's when he spotted Johnny's friend who was regarding them both skeptically. "You two aren't dating are you? Because I'd really like some forewarning if Sherlock is going to go on the warpath again."

"Me and Johnny?" Jack asked, shuddering a bit at the notion. "Definitely not."

"Congratulations," Johnny remarked dryly, "you've stumbled across Jack's only line when it comes to sex."

"No, there was also that one shapeshifting alien that turned out to be a giant praying mantis that wanted to bite off my head and lay her eggs in me," Jack said. That had been a harrowing experience, and Jack could only count himself lucky that Torchwood had showed up before he found out what would happen to him if he were beheaded. He was fairly sure that he wouldn't die, but whether his decapitated head could be returned to his neck was less certain. "Remember, I told that one writer and they turned it into a TV episode?"

"Wow, two whole lines," Johnny said, sarcastic, but with no real heat in his words.

Jack smirked at him, then turned back to his friend. "In answer to your earlier question, Johnny and I are old friends."

The friend raised both his eyebrows at Jack. "Really?"

Jack grinned his most charming grin. "Really. Johnny and I go way back."

At this point, Johnny was looking at Jack like he had put his foot in his mouth. It was a look that Jack got from Johnny a lot, though God knew why: everyone else thought Jack was perfectly charming. "This is Jim Kirk, Captain of the USS _Enterprise_."

"Hey, three captains walk into a bar," Jack interjected, and Johnny rolled his eyes at him.

"You were never actually a Captain, and I was medically discharged from an army that ceased to exist over a century ago." With Johnny's casual reveal of his history, Jack started to get a sinking feeling in his gut that he actually might have put his foot in his mouth this time.

"And actually off the _Enterprise_ I'm still a Commander until my promotion ceremony next month," Jim added.

"Which is beside the point, which is that _Commander_ Kirk and his crew were the ones who unfroze me," Johnny concluded.

"Ah," Jack said.

Jim smiled. "Ah. So, you want to tell me about how you and John are such old friends?"

Jack looked to Johnny, but he shook his head. "Don't look at me, you're the one who said it."

"But you're the one who really cares about this stuff," Jack countered. "How long was it before you told your boyfriend the truth, again?"

"Still not gay," Johnny said. Jack knew that of course, he wasn't a completely terrible father, but if Johnny didn't want to be teased, then he wouldn't make it so easy. Johnny sighed then, and turned to Jim. "I think that you're under the impression that the people from the Eugenics Wars were special because we were experimented on. The truth is we were experimented on because we were special."

Jim considered that for a minute before responding, "So all those cryotubes are full of X-Men? Is Professor Xavier in one of them?"

"No, we left Patrick Stewart back in the 21st century," Johnny responded wryly.

"Actor who played Professor X," Jack clarified, when Jim gave Johnny a confused look.

"Sorry, still getting used to the fact that my handful of pop culture references are now meaningless," Johnny explained. "The point is I'm extremely long-lived, he's immortal, and that's why he said we're old friends."

"I've known Johnny practically since the day he was born," Jack said, placing a hand on Johnny's shoulder.

"Practically," Johnny repeated, but that was an old argument that Jack rather suspected that they only ever had for the sake of it, not because they really meant it any more.

"Well, it's nice to meet you…"

"Jack Harkness," he said offering his hand while giving Jim a long slow look up and down. Honestly, it was something of a shame that Johnny was straight; he always seemed to manage to surround himself with such good-looking men and he wasn't even interested in taking advantage of it. Oh well, more for Jack. "Very pleased to meet you," said Jack, letting his hand linger against Jim's a bit, even after they were done shaking.

"No," Johnny said, with a tone very like something someone might use on their dog.

"What, I was just introducing myself!" Jack protested.

"Has anyone ever believed you when you've said that, ever?" Johnny said doubtfully, and Jack just shrugged.

"First time for everything."

Johnny sighed – really, Jack had no clue how he had managed to raise such a long-suffering child. "Jim," Johnny said, turning toward Jim in a way that implied a complete exclusion of Jack from the conversation. "I'd appreciate it if you didn't sleep with him; I'm enjoying having someone to commiserate with about the dragon stuff, and things always get awkward after someone sleeps with my dad."

"If it bothers you so much, you could just ask me not to sleep with your friends," Jack said. Johnny rolled his eyes, but at the same time he shifted his body language to acknowledge Jack again.

"I tried that once. To your credit, you made it nearly three years before sleeping with my ex-girlfriend," Johnny informed him.

"You can't hold that against me; ex-girlfriend and friend are two completely separate categories," Jack protested. "If you didn't want me sleeping with your ex-girlfriends, you should have told me that. And then made me a list, because I don't know how I'm supposed to keep track of them all when not even your super genius boyfriend can."

Johnny's jaw worked for a few seconds before he clamped it shut and shook his head. "I'm not even going to respond to that."

"If I can interrupt for a second," Jim said. "I just want to be clear here. Is he your biological father, your adoptive father, or a non-official father-like figure? Or is 'dad' just some weird nickname?"

"Biological father; I get my longevity from him," Johnny answered.

Jim nodded thoughtfully. "And if I sleep with him, then it's going to be too weird for you for us to hang out any more."

"God yes," Johnny said, but then he considered for a moment and amended it to, "At least for the next year or so. But by then you'll be out on your five year mission, yeah?"

"Yeah," Jim agreed. He turned to Jack and shrugged. "I'm pretty sure this is my loss, but I'm going to have to pass." It was both their loss the way Jack saw it, but he mentally shrugged it off too. You couldn't win them all, and Jack already won more than most as it was, so he was never too fussed when things didn't work out for him.

"Not that it isn't a tempting offer," Jim continued, and Johnny gave a 'God save me from these crazy people because I'm too old for this shit' groan, which was ridiculous because he was barely a century and a half – time spent frozen didn't count. Then again, Johnny had been groaning like that since he was seven; his son was just an old soul, Jack supposed. "But I think I've been impressing Spock with how well I've taken the whole 'secretly part dragon' revelation, and I really can't afford to lose my crutch."

"Thanks so much," Johnny said dryly.

Jim flashed him an exceedingly charming grin. "And of course John is such a good friend, I wouldn't want to upset him." Johnny snorted, in amusement or disbelief Jack couldn't tell, and he couldn't be bothered to figure it out at the moment, because he was still stuck about three steps back on this conversation.

"I'm sorry, who is Spock, and what do you mean by 'secretly part dragon?'" As far as Jack knew the only dragon in this universe, not counting the creatures on Berengaria VII since they weren't sapient, was Sherlock.

"What, Mycroft didn't tell you?" Johnny asked.

"I've never known Mycroft to be particularly good at offering up information," Jack observed, and Johnny made vague gesture of acknowledgement of the point. "Besides, while he's kept tabs on me on and off over the years, the only contact I've had with him since you were kidnapped was a note" – a handwritten one at that; Gandalf was so hopelessly (and a bit endearingly) old-fashioned at times – "saying 'Your son is awake,' that was hand delivered by his flunky Isabella who then hand delivered me here. Well, I doubt her name was actually Isabella, but she answered to it well enough anyway," Jack concluded with a salacious grin, but he left it at that out of respect for Johnny's general prudishness.

Johnny just rolled his eyes. "Okay, well the short version of the story is that in the midst of a lot of failure, our kidnappers did manage to successfully create a human-dragon hybrid baby, whom Mycroft kidnapped back and gave to Lestrade to raise. One thing lead to another and eventually lead to Spock, Jim's friend and First Officer."

"I have a grandson?" Jack asked, once he parsed out what Johnny was saying. A slow grin stole its way across his face; he'd never thought see the day. Harry had taken to calling their immortality, well Jack's immortality and Harry and John's extreme longevity if the Doctor's assessment of the matter was accurate, 'this hideous disease,' and while she'd grown out of that at the same time she'd grown out of her belated and interminably long rebellious phase, Jack set the odds of her ever deciding to pass her genes on as only slightly higher than those of her settling down with someone else and helping to raise their kids. Now Johnny Jack could see being a father, but only in some other life where he hadn't decided to hitch his wagon permanently to a human-shaped dragon who might possibly be reasonably sane by dragon standards, whatever those were – at any rate, Jack was willing to concede that Sherlock was no crazier than some of the people Jack hung around, not that that was a high bar to set. And yet, despite all that, here Jack was with his very own grandkid to spoil.

"First off, you're missing a couple of greats in there," Johnny said.

"Sherlock is Spock's great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather," Jim interjected counting the 'greats' out on his fingers as he did. "That's six 'greats.' Though I guess that would make seven 'greats' for you." Both Jack and Johnny gave Jim a look after this comment, and Jim threw his hands up. "Spock was correcting me so much, I had to memorize it. Pure self-defense. Though I suppose if Gandalf goes by Uncle Mycroft, you could probably get him to call you Grandpa Jack. Just tell him it's a human custom, and nine times out of ten he'll go with it. Well, eight times out of ten. Half the time, really. It worked this once."

Jack shrugged. "I'll take it."

"You're forgetting something," Johnny said. "He's not actually related to you in anyway."

"Of course he is," Jack countered. "Just because you and Sherlock have never officially tied the knot, that doesn't mean he's not my son-in-law."

"Yes it does. Where do you think the 'in-law' part comes from?"

"And I realize that might make him more like my step seven times great grandson," Jack continued, blithely ignoring Johnny's interruption, "but I don't think the step part should make a difference, do you?"

Johnny stared at him for a long moment, and then sighed. "Fine, he's your grandson."

Jack clapped his hands together decisively. "Good, now that that's settled, when do I get to meet him?"

Jim looked nonplussed for a moment or two, but then he shrugged. "I'm not doing anything right now. Spock," he glanced at his watch, "should be helping to oversee repairs on the _Enterprise_ at the moment, but nothing that can't be interrupted for a little family reunion. Well, not a _re_ union, exactly… Family union? No, that sounds kind of incestuous."

"Let's just call it a family meeting," Jack said.

"Sounds good," Jim agreed, standing up. "Are you coming John?"

Johnny considered it for a moment, then shrugged. "Sure, why not?"

Jim nodded, and then pulled out his communicator. "Kirk to Commander Scott, you there Scotty?"

"Scott here," replied the tinny and heavily accented voice. "Captain, thank God you called. I need you to do something about these engineers headquarters sent over. All a bunch off egg-headed idiots with no real experience mucking about in my engine room. I doubt any of them have ever even left Earth and they've got no notion of what it means to work on a starship. Your repair jobs are better than theirs."

Jim let out a bark of laughter, but he looked a little pained as he did it. "Too soon for that joke, I think." Jack got the feeling he was missing some of the story here.

"I would never joke about my engines," Scotty replied.

"Oh, well," Jim said, scratching the back of his head, "thanks, I think. But I don't know what you want me to do; half of our normal crew are on other assignments right now and another third are on leave. There's just not enough manpower to get the _Enterprise_ ready in time without some extra hands. Though, do I still owe you one from the thing with the torpedoes?"

"Death repays all debts," was the solemn response, and yes, there was definitely more to this. Johnny was looking a little guilty at the moment too, maybe Jack could pry the story from him later. "But I do recall an incident from last month that you made me promise not to mention to the good doctor…"

"I'll see what I can do," Jim said hastily. Actually, forget the other thing, this sounded like the story Jack wanted to hear. "For the moment, I can at least take one of them off your hands; I need someone to go to the transporter room to beam me and my two guests up."

"I'll do it myself; I need a break before I start knocking heads together anyway," Scotty said.

"Alright, see you in a few. Oh, and Scotty, don't tell Spock I'm coming. I'm bringing something for him and I want it to be a surprise."

"Aye, sir," Scotty said. "Scott out."

"Dragons," Johnny interjected in a tone of one imparting great wisdom, "hate surprises."

Jim winced a little, but shrugged it off. "I'm sure it will be fine."

"What could possibly go wrong?" Jack opinioned brightly. Both Jim and Johnny shot him dirty looks, and Jack just grinned back unrepentantly.

Really, Johnny was just too easy to tease.

* * *

AN: The next fic is "A Prince I'm Hoping Comes With This" (Story ID:11787736)


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